Editor's Note

The Charge

All blonde! All beautiful! All bait!

The Case

In Los Angeles, a troubled gardener, recently divorced, is killing a series
of busty, beautiful, blonde women who happen to remind him of his wife. Will his
garden shears strike again, or will he meet justice at the hands of a couple of
hard-boiled LAPD detectives?

Without Warning comes billed as a "lost noir," and indeed
sites like the IMDb label is as such. However, it lacks most of the trappings
usually associated with the genre. This is the most un-gritty noir I have ever
seen. The Los Angeles depicted here is a bright, sunlit place, full of hardware
and garden supply stores—sort of an oversized Mayberry, except for the
disaffected serial killer lurking on the edge of town, within sight of the shiny
modern highways and skyscrapers. The cops investigating the "love
killer" aren't the hard-bitten, cynical flatfoots one expects in a noir.
Instead, these guys are a couple of regular Joes. "Pete," the lead
homicide detective (Edward Binns, Twelve
Angry Men, Patton) doesn't seem like
the usual cigarettes-and-cheap bourbon gumshoe we expect; he probably goes home
to a nice, normal family after work and has pot roast and mashed potatoes. Even
the killer (Adam Williams, The Big
Heat, Fear Strikes Out) seems like
a normal, clean-cut sort of fellow when he's not stalking and killing attractive
blondes. The whole case, apart from the aforementioned seduction and stabbing,
seems pretty tame, the sort of thing that might make a nice two-part episode of
a TV cop show. Even the quirky lab technician, with his dry humor and odd habit
of using chemistry flasks and tubes to make coffee, seems like a made-for-TV
sidekick. Indeed, first-time director Arnold Laven went on to some considerable
success directing television programs like CHiPs, Hill Street
Blues, and The Rockford Files. Perhaps more importantly, the film
lacks the sense of moral ambiguity that characterizes the masterpieces of the
genre. There is no doubt in the viewer's mind that the cops are good and
upstanding while the killer is sick and disturbed. In short, Without
Warning is a neat little police procedural, but it doesn't fit the mental
image or definition I have of film noir. (I'm sure readers will write in to tell
me how wrong I am, however.)

Genre hairsplitting aside, Without Warning is a nicely done if
unremarkable yarn, with a goodly amount of suspense. Williams's psycho killer is
all the more frightening precisely because he is so normal, a seemingly regular
guy hiding dark secrets. The police work carries a note of authenticity and even
ingenuity, even if it seems quaint to viewers of the modern-day
forensics-glutted primetime lineup. Director Laven is clearly a competent
craftsman, and while his handiwork doesn't show a lot of ingenuity or
innovation, he tells his story and provides the thrills smoothly and
efficiently.

Without Warning is an early entry in the catalog of a new imprint,
Dark Sky Films, which is a subsidiary of MPI Home Video dedicated, in their
words, to "deliver the highest quality in classic horror, grindhouse,
oddities and 'lost' films to fans of the more eclectic genres of home
entertainment." Regardless of who might be responsible, this is a very
nice-looking transfer. There are some scratches and blemishes visible in the
very early going, but for the most part this is a shockingly bright, clean,
clear transfer with almost no digital gremlins to complain about. The audio,
presented in its original mono format, is mostly clean and pleasant. Overall,
this is a surprisingly good transfer of a nearly unknown film. Special features
are limited to a photo gallery. Not groundbreaking stuff, but better than the
bare-bones treatment I would have expected.

In short, Without Warning is an interesting police procedural that
probably doesn't deserve the "film noir" tag that's been hung on it.
The DVD from Dark Sky Films/MPI offers a great transfer. If you like this sort
of thing, you will probably find Without Warning an interesting
diversion.